Inexorable leftist gibbering from someone somewhere. || "Our press, which you appear to regard as being free ... is the most enslaved and the vilest thing." -- William Cobbett. || “Tridents (sic) are not weapons of mass destruction.” -- Nadine Dorries MP

Just imagine for a second that this wasn't in a school. Say it was in a busy shopping mall. The security and management of the mall installed CCTV in the toilets because they said that vandalism, smoking and drug-taking occurred in there. Not only would there be universal outrage, those behind the scheme would possibly get sacked and for good reason. While Britain has taken the constant surveillance of nearly every street in the country in its stride, I can't imagine anyone daring to defend putting CCTV in toilets.

That the school has decided to take such a measure shows how obviously disconnected the leadership of the school is from its own pupils. Any teacher will tell you that if you respect your students, they will respect you. This measure removes any notion of that. Instead of taking the option of positioning a member of staff near the toilets, who could monitor how long people were in there and possibly what they had been doing, they've decided to install a constant monitor of exactly what they're doing in probably the one place that most people consider to still be private.

That it's none of the school's business if the kids are smoking is obviously irrelevant. I never saw the point when I was at school of punishing children for smoking. It was their decision, they knew perfectly well what they were doing. They could have informed the child's parents if they caught them doing it. Instead they put them on "report", constantly monitoring the child's behaviour even if it was exemplary, and gave detentions. That this was completely hypocritical as it was well-known that many teachers smoked on school property didn't matter. Drug-taking is a different matter if it is occurring on school property. I only ever witnessed people smoking weed or coming back to lessons completely stoned, and they caused little harm generally. That said, drug taking and possession/selling is obviously more heinous than simple smoking. It needs to be dealed with. Unfortunately, the government is currently encouraging random testing, even though it's a private matter if it doesn't happen at school. The invasion of those at school's privacy climbs year on year, as more schools also adopt random searching for weapons.

I always felt that school was simply a lesser form of a totalitarian dictatorship. You had little say in any of the matters of running the school. Mine had a "student council" which relied on elections, which were blatant popularity contests. It didn't matter if those elected were too shy or idiotic to even take notes or then stand up in front of the class and say what happened. This was democracy in action. Another thing that annoyed me was the hypocrisy of some of the teachers - the typical kind who demanded you take off your coat in the dead of winter while they sat there in theirs, sipping hot tea from their mug with a daft slogan on it. The many who always considered you guilty until proven innocent, for whatever misdemeanors which may have occurred. The humiliating experience of having to go and a piece of paper saying what time you had arrived if you were so much as two minutes late. This time was then how long you would spend in detention, added up over the week. This is not to say that schools are full of little angels who obey every command. Mine was full of uncooperative shits who would have tested the patience of Ghandi. It's simply that some teachers came in who already had a trench warfare mentality; that treating you like dirt would somehow make you fear them. It didn't work, and never has. Most of the above is simply counter-productive.

This installation of CCTV is from a similar school of thought. It ignores that students sometimes use toilets as havens as well as places to smoke, roll joints and throw wet toilet paper at the ceiling. Some would sit in there at lunchtime to be alone or avoid other people. I never did that, but I often left the school when I didn't have a lesson and went and sat in nearby public toilets. I could read in peace without anyone bothering me. As Michael Moore said in Bowling for Columbine, it sucks being a teenager and it sucks having to go to school. When schools treat you as a threat rather than as someone to teach, what do they honestly expect?

Friday, September 16, 2005

Was Clarke overruled by Blair?

Seems the Charles Clarke definitely had doubts over the possible imprisoning of terrorist suspects for up to 3 months. Was he then overruled by the Dear Leader who demanded that he follow the requests from the security services and police?

Is Charles Clarke going to turn out to be another critic of government policy when/if he leaves the cabinet? It was rumoured when he was promoted to Home Secretary following David Blunkett's resignation that he had been firmly against the introduction of ID Cards; he soon rectified that rumour by continuing with Blunkett's campaign to get them through parliament as quickly as possible. That still doesn't explain what his personal view is though. In recent weeks there have been persistent reports that Blair is not happy with Clarke's performance, that he is "too soft". That this is nonsense doesn't matter; the tabloids loved Blunkett until he became an easy scapegoat for their hatred of Labour before the election. The Daily Mail especially put the knife into his back. The tabloids this time are not supportive of Clarke. That Clarke still seems to have some doubts about the way the new terrorist laws are being seemingly drafted by Blair is encouraging - what's depressing is that he seems to be failing to have much input on them.

As well as this, yesterday's annoucement on the offence of "glorification" has today been further clarified:

Making the gloryifying of historical terrorist attacks a criminal offence smacks of countries which make Holocaust denial an offence. There is no doubting that such people are misled, stupid or willing to make others think that the opposite to the truth is the actual reality, but what is the point of wasting time legislating and then prosecuting such people? I'm not sure whether Holocaust denial falls under incitement to racial hatred in this country, but even if it does the point stands. Why can we not tackle these people through debate and summaries of the facts? Also as mentioned yesterday, the UN can't even decide what an act of terrorism actually is. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

What is good to see is that some of the most extreme measures which the Dear Leader previously outlined have been quietly dropped or sidelined for the moment - hopefully for good. Closing down Mosques on reports of extremism is only going to enflame the situation around the country. As the Finchley Park debacle showed, the Mosque there was reclaimed while the likes of Abu Hamza just went outside and carried on their preaching in the street, solving little. The refusal to asylum of anyone associated to "terrorism" would have been an unworkable mindfield that may have condemned some to death at the hands of despotic regimes. The government seems to have seen sense on that point. Hopefully the government, with opposition from civil liberties groups and other political parties, will yet see sense on other measures of this draconian and mostly unnecessary bill.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Prince Harry: For God's sake, shut up.

It's pretty pathetic that so much of this country still seems so obsessed with the royal family that Prince Harry's 21st birthday can't go by without there being a huge amount of bile splashed across both the TV and newspapers about him, with the interview being the main focus. Apparently he wants to fight for his country. If so, send him to Iraq. In fact, send the whole goddamn royal family there. The sooner we stop viewing them as important people and as commoners who have simply had the luck to be born into richness beyond most of our dreams, the sooner we'll get rid of the lot of them.

3 months is a ridiculously lengthy amount of time to compile a case worthy of charging a suspect, whatever they are accused of doing. I accept that cracking PGP keys or encryption is obviously time-consuming, but three months? If anything this just shows under-staffed with specialists the police are. Note that it's only recently been agreed to extend the time to 14 days - the suspects in the July 21st "attacks" were charged before that period had even elapsed. A month, even six weeks may have been acceptable. Instead the government has followed the most draconian measures which the police and security services have demanded. It also brings into question how suspects will be treated during their time in custody. It needs to be clarified exactly how long they can be questioned for without a break. When arrested now, you are handed a piece of paper explaining your rights in detail. Those arrested under the terrorism acts need to be even more aware of what can and cannot be done.

The Lib Dems are also right in at the moment opposing the glorification offence. As has been shown at the UN in the last few days, defining terrorism itself is difficult enough, so what exactly would "glorification" be? Would it be daring to call Palestinian suicide bombers martyrs? If so, the current leaders of mainstream Islamic organisations may well be in trouble. Those glorifying acts of violence against innocent populations are obviously deluded and a possible danger, but so is the BNP. We've dealt with them and the far-right without banning them for half a century. Exposing their arguments for what they are has worked for a long time. The rush to make free speech illegal is worrying. Instead of engaging with Islamic groups, we've had BBC's Panorama which was a very one-sided and unsubtle veiled attack on the current leadership. The banning of peaceful but radical grouping Hizb-ut-Tahrir is also a retrograde step. At the moment the government and the media seem intent on provoking rather than helping and understanding.

Even more disgraceful is the move today to attempt to deport some of those who were acquitted in the so-called ricin case. It certainly seems to be taking revenge on those who humiliated the government when their case fell to pieces. While most of the media followed the government line, especially the BBC, whose reporting was some of the worst on the case that I have ever seen on the corporation, the Guardian demolished the government's case and reported the truth.

The government hyped the case from the beginning. Colin Powell used it in his now hilariously funny UN presentation on Iraq's "Weapons of Mass Destruction". When the jury acquitted the men, they had passed judgment that they were innocent. Now instead of the government trying the men again, they are deporting them, probably back to Algeria when they come to an agreement with that country on torture. If this isn't to be seen as a government lashing out for being humiliated in spite, they have a lot of explaining to do.

Mr Spence doesn't know what he's talking about. Fuel duty has been held at the same level for the last two years because of the high oil price - there was little to no chance that Gordon Brown was going to raise it, especially after Hurricane Katrina. I'd like to think that the majority that were going to protest have realised that the high price of fuel is nothing to do with the government, and all to do with the volatile situation in the Middle East, the hurricane and the greed of the oil companies themselves. Instead, the extremists are those who have showed up. The farmers who already are heavily subsidised and those who hate Labour with a passion.

The real culprit for the panic buying seen on Monday and Tuesday and according to some reports continuing today is the mass media. I assume the reports on possible shortages were in the scaremongering Sunday rags; I only saw the Sunday Mirror and didn't see any mention of it in there. Instead of reporting the situation which the petrol retailers and the government has said all along, that there was no shortage and no chance of one, they went along with their line of a juicy story to cause fear. It also wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't something to do with the number of adverts being placed in the media by the oil and petrol companies, constantly trying to convince us that they take human rights, the environment and climate change seriously. Is this their revenge for spending on the adverts, helped along by the media who gets a large amount of their advertising revenue from such companies? I honestly can't say I know.

The main thing is that the protests have failed, barring any militant action tomorrow or on Friday, when there is supposed to be a go slow blockade on the M4. The public may be unhappy about the price of fuel, but turning up at depots and blaming the government isn't going to solve anything.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Held to ransom by the selfish and the greedy.

It doesn't take a lot to get people panicking in general. When the panic involves the price of petrol, before you know it people are filling their cars full and leaving the stations empty. That's exactly what happened in some areas yesterday, and appears to be continuing on a slightly lower level today:

The average cost of petrol in the UK is now around 96p a litre. The price has risen dramatically this year due to the rising cost of oil, and has now been pushed higher due to Hurricane Katrina in the United States, which knocked out a series of refineries.

The price in the UK for petrol is higher than most countries on the continent for a few simple reasons. While countries such as France have lower tax duty on petrol, they pay more in taxes than we do in Britain in other ways. Secondly, this is not the government's fault. Gordon Brown has frozen the rise of fuel duty in line with inflation now for two years due to the high price of oil. As a result, pump prices have actually risen slower than in other countries. Britain is also running out of oil in its North Sea plants, making us coming to rely more on imports, especially from the Opec countries.

This however goes straight over the heads of the constantly angry majority in the country. The farmers, haulage industry and business leaders are all majority Tory voters and supporters. In addition to this, most farmers do not pay duty on their fuel, as they get the special "red-diesel". The haulage industry, which wants to introduce huge 60-ton trucks to British roads, permanently demands lower and lower fuel prices. This is not out of wanting to charge their customers lower prices; it's because they want to pocket the difference and make even huger profits, at the expense of the environment.

In fact, they have chosen the entirely wrong target. They should be focusing on the oil companies themselves, who are making huge profits in the wake of record oil prices. In July both Shell and BP announced record half-year profits, totaling 11bn. Imagine how those profits could be used to help lower the burden on the consumer. Of course, they will instead continue to please their shareholders by driving for ever huger surpluses.

Most of all though, it shows how out of touch the majority are, and how the general public and business is not admitting to a new global reality. Global warming is here, and it isn't going to go away. As we continue to use up the remaining oil we have at an ever faster rate, we are ever closer bringing us towards a crash. We need to reduce our use and reliance on oil, the car and the airplane immediately. This means changing our lives. Unless we face up to this, the crash will be more devastating and arrive sooner. At the moment we are being held to ransom by the selfish, the greedy and the dishonest. If the government gives in, then their entire environmental policy will be shown to be even more of a sham than it already is.

Collagen being made from executed Chinese prisoners.

There's something pretty ironic about this. In Fight Club Tyler sold women the waste from their liposuctions back to them as soap. In this supposedly free age where women can pay huge amounts of money to become 'beautiful', they may well be being injected with what was the flesh of someone who most definitely wasn't free:

Not that this will make any difference to the average person who decides to have cosmetic surgery. These are the same people who think nothing of having a poison (Botox) injected into their foreheads to try to remove wrinkles. A recent article in Adbusters highlighted the number of young women who are now so concerned with how their vaginas look that they are having their labias augmented. A quick google search brings up 2 places offering the service. Another now popular request is apparently for anal bleaching - making the brown eye pink so to speak. If anything, this just seems to have been prompted by women looking at pornography and seeing the girls with their clean perfect bottoms, although there also seems to be rumours flying around about various celebrities having it done.

It does make you wonder where all this is going to end. Is it that people now are so vain or infatuated with beauty that they turn to the knife to sort out their problems? Is it the media, or is actually ourselves, with our seeming demand only for beautiful people to be our heroes? I can't say I know.

Monday, September 12, 2005

The changing of the Guardian.

The Guardian has changed its size from broadsheet to the Berliner (around mid-size between a tabloid and broadsheet) following the moves of the Independent and Times which went tabloid a couple of years ago. The wait and the money spent was well worth it; the paper really does look fantastic. The paper is now full colour throughout, the first national in Britain to go so. It's much more foldable, and I even found it easier to read than before. The G2 section though has to be the biggest triumph. It's gone to half the size of the Berliner, stapled, and is beautiful. The full colour printing really does lift the content.

You can view the whole of today's edition in PDF files, which are available here.

All those are teething problems however. The new paper and design is fantastic. Here's to the journalism remaining the same quality and to hopefully a lot more readers coming to the best paper in the UK.

Unionism's shameful days.

I still can't quite believe that Unionist politicians are blaming the government for the completely unnecessary and pathetic riots which have consumed Baghdad, sorry, Belfast for the last two nights:

Fifty police officers were injured during the weekend's riots across Belfast, Northern Ireland police said today.

A police spokesman said 18 officers were injured in riots last night and this morning, bringing the total number of officers injured since Saturday night to 50. The officers were largely injured by shrapnel from homemade grenades.

The violence began on Saturday night when loyalist supporters became angry at the re-routing of an Orange Order parade.

Last night, armed protestors set up roadblocks as police and the army battled with violent mobs up to 700-strong in the east of Belfast. In other areas, men with revolvers halted cars in the north of the city and in Rathcoole, although there were no reports of anyone being shot.

Riot police held back crowds with water cannons and fired several hundred plastic bullets in an effort to disperse the protestors. One Protestant man, who had been shot in the arm by British troops, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain challenged loyalists this morning to decide if they wanted to become known as police killers. He told BBC Breakfast he was "horrified" by the violence that had ravaged the streets.

"This is taking Northern Ireland, or attempting to take it, back to a hideous dark past," he said. "These were serious attempts to kill police in some instances.

"This is really not loyalism but 'gangsterism' masquerading in this community. They are turning on themselves. These communities are being torn apart by their own paramilitary groups."

The Northern Irish chief constable, Sir Hugh Orde, said he was holding the Orange Order "substantially responsible" for the rioting, which was "some of the worst" in the province for many years.

He said his officers had come under attack from petrol, blast and pipe bombs as well as live rounds.

"We are very clear, our intelligence picture is very clear, this was loyalist paramilitary groups firing from the cover of the riot, aiming at my officers," he told the Today programme.

"There was a call by the Orange Order for their supporters to come out and support the march which had been banned from a certain route and had been given a determined route to go down.

"That's why we are holding them, or I am holding them, substantially responsible for the disorder that followed. It was inevitable and it was predictable."

Sinn Fein general secretary Mitchel McLaughlin said there had been disturbances across Belfast and North Antrim since the IRA announced the end of its armed struggle.

Mr McLaughlin argued that unionist politicians had left "a vacuum of leadership" which was being filled by loyalist paramilitaries.

Also speaking on the Today programme, he said: "It would appear that there is a deep sense of foreboding and concern about the future and there is an absolute vacuum of leadership within unionism at the present time, and unfortunately that manifested itself at the weekend."

Mr McLaughlin said many Protestants believed they had been short-changed in the peace process.

"I'm afraid that is the reality for unionists. It is not the reality for people who have been seeking for many years equality and indeed there is a puzzlement as to why equality and parity of esteem would threaten anyone's interest.

"But the fact of the matter is that many unionists feel that and clearly that is an issue which has to be addressed in the discussions if we could get the unionist party leadership to sit round the table and discuss these matters."

Peter Hain is utterly wrong. This is not gangsterism. This is loyalism's seeming revenge for what they see as a peace process that favours the republicans. That this is not only nonsense, but ignores the realities of the situation since the signing of the Good Friday agreement is even worse. These riots are the equivalent of a child who feels neglected when a new baby is born, and attention is diverted from them. Unlike the jealousy of a child who may do something silly and is too immature to realise the consequences, the loyalists know full well what they are doing. This was not a banning of their parade. It was a simple 100 metre diversion so that the parade did not pass through a Catholic-majority street and cause unnecessary trouble. The police were entirely right in their actions.

Unfortunately, unionism is now, as has been shown in the last few months, at war with itself. The IRA is to disband. Within weeks it will most likely have completely disarmed. Such a gesture is one that completely destroys the current unionist position of not talking or going into government with Sinn Fein while it has links with the IRA, or lies in the same bed as it. Ian Paisley's humiliating requests for photographs of weapons being destroyed were rightly denied. His only intention is to belittle the republican community, and portray them as weak at a time when they have just decided to perform such a historic move.

Most of all however, you can imagine the fury and denounciations which would be filling the airwaves if it had been the republican community rioting. Instead, Sinn Fein and others have mostly kept quiet, a credit to their judgment. Loyalist politicians themselves have shown themselves to either be incompetent, unable to control their own followers, or complicit in the violence itself. They have chosen to act like someone found guilty who then blames everyone except themselves and wallows in self-pity:

Belfast's most senior Orangeman, County Grand Master Dawson Bailie, told the BBC on Monday that the Orange Order was not responsible for the weekend disorder.

When asked if the Order condemned the violence, he said: "As far as I'm concerned the people to blame for that are the secretary of state, the chief constable and the Parades Commission, fairly and squarely."

DUP leader Ian Paisley denied prompting riots by saying the parade re-routing "could be the spark which kindles a fire there would be no putting out".

Mr Paisley condemned the violence but said his prediction had come true.

"I was telling the truth, I said I was very very worried," he said on Monday.

"At that time I was in the midst of trying to get a way whereby this would not happen. And it has happened - my words have been proved to be right."

The parade was re-routed by 100 metres. That such an act would spark violence is an outrage. The second Palestinian intifada was prompted by Ariel Sharon visiting the Al-Haram As-Sharif mosque, surrounded by 1000 bodyguards. This was not even close to such a provocative and stupid decision. This was an excuse for the loyalist thugs to show that they are still in action and are not going to go away any time soon, unlike the IRA. That Ian Paisley is either aware of this or actively encouraging it while denying it in public, is a disgrace. Sadly, he'll get away with it, just like loyalism will. Within two months this will have been forgotten, and once again, the republican community will be being attacked, with no news coverage of it whatsoever.